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In the days that unit was in service it was powered by an air pump that supplied air to the riser tube which created a solid lift column of water driven by the air trying to displace past it. The units air supply needed an accurate air valve which could be calibrated to make the lifting of the water efficient.

You would use layers of filter floss and layers of chunk coal or carbon to filter the water and remove solids and use the coal to absorb odors and some chemicals.

To start the unit you would fill it full of water with a cup and turn on the air.

The secret to using this unit was in how you serviced it. If you tossed all of the filter floss and carbon you killed the biological that was in it. The trick was to wash lightly in tank water in a container 50% of the floss and reuse it.

It would then reseed the bio and life would be great.

With the new tech stuff such as better carbon, zeolites and purse type bags for media which can be layered in efficiently you can actually get excellent performance from a little unit such as this. These are very low maintenance, inexpensive, the bags and media can be designed to be inexpensive and they are cheap to operate.

You know at least those filters where built solid. You know if you think about it the principal on the Eheim Classic is the same when it comes to no baskets yes a much updated motor but the way you load it is similiar.

I was joking on a forum when they where talking about the old filters the Surpreme which ran off a Dodge 225 Slant six and was almost the size of the tank. And air pumps that ran forever but you could hear them two houses up the road. I wish I could remember the model where you used your hand you work to get the siphon started then you would loose the siphon and would have to mess with it to get it started again. I ran across a website that had the patterns listed for these old filters I will try to look it up?

I know this is an extremely old thread but I had come across it while researching air powered external filters....

Back around 1970 I recall my dad using the old siphon tube style that's been mentioned.

I bought a couple of these longlifes, from- judging from the photo at the start of the thread- the same merchant the OP was corresponding with.

They were made in the USA by Hartz Mountain, they were new enough to have UPCs on the boxes so that places these particular examples no earlier than middle to late 70s. Unfortunately there were no copyright dates or patent numbers to go by.

I'm using one in a tank along with a corner filter... I have a fascination with air powered filtration, obviously. It's fun to watch in operation, if you like that kinda thing.

According to the packaging it should get up to 40gph... they may be a little generous with that but it actually does better than I expected. As Indian Woods posted it could probably be fine tuned with an air valve for the most efficiency- I just have mine wide open but I actually think it could do a little better with the air turned down a tiny bit, I don't have a spare right now to see but I noticed when I cut the power and tested it with my little bait bucket battery air pump it seemed to do as well or better than the main air pump (which is one side of a dual outlet Walmart job). Meh.